Lisa Marie Abato

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Lisa Marie Abato, born in 1966 or 1967, is an American former porn actress who used the stage name Holly Ryder and later became an anti-pornography activist. She spent more than two years in the adult film industry, appearing in about 200 videos. In the early 1990s, during the AIDS crisis, she moved away from traditional porn to non-sexual or less explicit work, including BDSM films that did not require intercourse. In October 1992 she competed in the Adult Video Boxing Championships against Laurie Pike and retired from porn in December 1992.

After retiring, she started the Holly Ryder Foundation to fund research on runaways. In 1993 the foundation donated $250,000 to UCLA to study runaways in the sex industry. Abato then became an anti-pornography activist, arguing that the industry is linked to drugs and money laundering. She formed the Holly Ryder Commission, a political action committee aimed at ending pornography in California, and began collecting signatures for a ballot measure to ban the sale of pornography in California and to redefine pornographic films as prostitution for the November 1994 elections. Her efforts were opposed by free-speech advocates. She funded her activism with an inheritance from her grandmother. By 1993, she was studying to be a stockbroker.